Microsoft has a little surprise in store for those using USB Flash drives for storage on their Xbox 360 consoles. With the latest update, Microsoft has doubled the allowed size of USB flash drives from 16GB to 32GB.

The news of the capacity increase came as more users have been getting the latest dashboard update. Previously, even if you had a larger flash drive than 16GB, the Xbox 360 would only allow users to use 16GB of the available storage space.

The storage increase comes as Microsoft confirms that Halo 4 will require 8GB of available storage space. The capacity increase will help those users that have opted not to go with a hard drive, but instead have taken advantage of the cheap prices of USB flash drive storage for handling their storage needs. Some users have reported using multiple USB flash drives and are pleased with the option, as it is still cheaper in most cases than buying a hard drive for use with their Xbox 360.

While the price of 32GB USB flash drives isn’t as cheap as 16GB flash drives yet, 32GB USB flash drives are now under $20, and we see the price going a bit lower as many makers are moving to USB 3.0 drives; which is making for great deals on the older and slower USB 2.0 models. Since the Xbox 360 does not support USB 3.0, there is no gain in buying a USB 3.0 model. With two 32GB drives, users have more storage than the 60GB hard drive that appeared in the Xbox 360 for a short time prior to the company moving away from both the 20GB and 60GB models in favor of the 120GB drive, which became the standard for a long time.

Sapphire has followed up AMD with its new Radeon HD 7950 BIOS and launched a new Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 Boost Vapor-X OC graphics card.

Sapphire even tweaked the specifications a bit leaving the base GPU clock at 850MHz but pushing the Boost clock up from AMD's 925MHz to 950MHz. It also comes with 3GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at 5GHz and paired up with a 384-bit memory interface.

As a part of Sapphire's Vapor-X lineup, the card uses a Sapphire Vapor-X cooler with larger vapor-chamber plate paired up with a large heatsink and a pair of 90mm fans. The PCB also got a slight tweak so you are looking at a graphics card that needs two 8-pin PCI-Express power connectors due to its beefier VRM.

The new Sapphire HD 7950 Boost Vapor-X OC graphics card is expected to hit retail/e-tail with a US $350 price tag.

The company apparently has 40 new models in store for 2012. While the company shipped 6 million smartphones in 2011, its current plan is to ship as much as 18 million in 2012.

Lenovo plans on covering all price segments and the company revealed some interesting statistics for the Chinese market. Namely, smartphones priced below about $157 make up for 30 percent of smartphones sold in China; smartphones between $157 and $237 make up for 30 percent, while models pricier than $237 make the other 40%.

The company has achieved quite a feat already in 2012, as it managed to boost its smartphone shipments from 1 percent share in 2011 to 10 percent in the first quarter of 2012 alone. Additionally, analysts placed it fourth in the Chinese smartphone segment.

In an attempt to catch up with Google, Microsoft has redesigned its Bing search engine. As we’ve grown to expect these days, the company included elements from social networking sites such as Facebook.

Microsoft’s online unit has lost more than $6 billion since launching Bing. Naturally, it’s still light years away from challenging Google. In fact, we’d say it’s as close to Google as Google+ is to Facebook.

So, the company is now rolling out a new three column design. Apart from the usual search results on the left, Bing will now feature an instant snapshot column. This feature will display extra information you may find useful.

Bing will now come with a ‘Facebook Friends’ column, enabling users to ask their friends’ advice on search. The search engine will also offer access to users’ contacts on Linkedln, twitter and other social networking sites.

When it comes to search engine usage, Bing stands at 15 percent market share, which isn’t too shabby. However, the ground it gained is attributed to Yahoo’s fall from grace. Google still stands as undisputed king at 66 percent share.

Sources are confirming that Microsoft is raising the max gamerscore limits for Xbox Live Arcade titles starting on June 1st. In addition, developers will be able to have a little more flexibility for DLC add-ons over the life of the arcade title, which means more Achievements with a new possible max cap of 62 with DLC add-ons.

If correct, the base Gamerscore for an Xbox Live Arcade title will move from 200 points/20 achievements to 400 points/30 achievements. With DLC allowing for another eight achievements per quarter (with a max of 100 points for a maximum of four quarters) this provides a new total of 800 maximum per Xbox Live Arcade title with max cap of 62, which is quite a jump from the old max of 35.

The additional gamer score addition is voluntary for releases coming between April 1st and May 31st ; but starting June 1st this will be the new norm for Xbox Live Arcade Gamerscore and Achievements going forward.

Samsung is set to report a robust quarterly profit rise on Friday, starting the year on an upbeat note aided by sales of smartphones. Samsung is now the world's top smartphone maker in the third quarter, is continuing to give Apple a good kicking with sleek designs and a rich product line-up.

Its handset division is now Samsung's biggest earnings generator, raking in record profits. The company appears to be dealing with a profit squeeze from its memory chips with new revenue sources such as mobile processing chips and high-end OLED displays.

The world's biggest technology firm by revenue is likely to report $4.1 billion in October-December analyts think. That would be its best profit since the third quarter of 2010, and up 57 percent from a year ago and 11 percent from the preceding quarter.

In 2012, Samsung is likely to report a 28 percent rise in operating profit with a 12 percent gain in revenue, according to analysts.